Elem Social Studies 02 (Caroline)

After tonights class I was able to reflect about the things that were big take aways and the things that I still wonder about. Both of the activities that we did in class tonight seemed like very practical hands on lessons that I would feel extremely comfortable doing in my own class.

The grouping of the documents and having us use our investigative skills to determine the time line of the items that we had, followed by the group discussion was a wonderful way to take information and place it outside of a textbook. As a learner who needs to be activity doing something for it to make sense to me this was a wonderful way for me to see how this can direct a lesson. Taking the information that has previously been taught through text that may have no personal connection, and placing real life items in front of students (myself) made me extremely invested in the activity. I do wonder however, how to gather these kinds of documents? Would I allow students to go home and ask relatives or would I do this activity as an introduction to unit as a way of prompting them to begin thinking about that era? We were able to stay focused on the items in front of us, but should I be worried that I may not have students full attention if they do not have a wide knowledge of the time period?

I know that each student will process through things in different ways and at different speeds, but tonights activities were perfect for my style of learning 🙂

Reflecting back on class tonight after I had sometime to think about the information that was presented, I think that the activity could be very beneficial to an educational classroom. While the process did seem to move slow tonight the video at the end really made each step process for me. Seeing how important that it is to give the correct amount of time to review each document and make a claim about what I have read and reviewed is a very important piece of the puzzle. As was mentioned many times tonight, helping my students create a perspective that is wide and much more vast than words that are simply in a textbook is an exciting thought. Knowing the impact that developing a sense of awareness to not believe the first thing that they read would be a skill that the students could use far outside the walls of my future classroom.

Personally, my concern with presenting information this way, as I am sure will be the case with most things, is how to handle push back from students who don’t want to use the model that I have selected. While I want to welcome that student development I am also worried that it would fluster me and cause me to lose track of time. Keeping students on task even if they don’t agree with the process is a skill I am sure I will develop as I have practice, however the thought of it at this moment is a little bit scary. Overall, I think that seeing this done in class in the process that students would take was super helpful!

In reflecting through the second class I really felt that the textbook reading that I did was able to be put into practical use. So often in the past, the texts that I have read for classes are simply just a way for teachers and professors to cover a large amount of material without having to use class time to go into depth about it. Using the hands on learning that we did last night allowed me to see several different ways that I could include these styles into my future class.

The biggest thing that I was able to see last night was the importance of practicing different strategies before attempting to use them in the classroom. With large amounts of information there are going to be different methods of instruction that work better than others and often times the only way to know that is to have practiced it before you teach it.

As I think about how this would look in my classroom it continues to stress the importance of being prepare at least a day in advance with my lesson plans and the materials needed for that lesson. If I am attempting to teach something that I have not fully prepared for it will become very evident in the way that I am doing my instruction and the confidence level that I have with the material being presented. I really enjoyed last night and all of the different hands on activities that are very practical in a classroom!

After sitting through the first night of class there are a couple big take aways that I felt truly stood out to me about what the semester will look like. The first of these take aways being that during the class we will learn ways in which to teach social studies content through active learning. I know personally from my experience in social studies classes it has always felt very content heavy. There seemed to be a large amount of terms that just needed to be memorized and the idea of having hands on active learning was not a top priority. Learning how to still teach the content, but have the students engaged is an exciting way to teach and learn content that may be a little bit on the dry side.

The second large take away that I took from the first night of class the many ways in which curriculum and be integrated into all subjects during the school day. Using the different areas of a students day to help them earn material will not only help the student become more engaged with the content, but it will create a way in which for subject matter to be presented in many different forms. As I look to the way in which I will write lesson plants and in a short time teach my own class, I am very interested in ways in which to integrate this concept into my classroom. As the semester gets started this is one thing that I am looking forward to learning. Keeping social studies in a box that is only taught during that time creates a structure that does not allow much freedom for it to be used other times, knowing that I will have the skills to help it flow into other areas of my teaching is a very exciting concept.

I really enjoyed the first night of class and I am looking forward to getting to learn better ways to teach social studies content to elementary students in the very near future.